Michael Williams: Readers' editor

"Don't worry; I'll look it up on Wikipedia." This wasn't my teenage daughter struggling with her homework, but one of our respected senior journalists, with whom I had disputed a fact the other day. Despite having been nurtured in the old journalistic school of "check it once, check it twice and then check it again", he was happy to rely on the internet encylopaedia whose mostly unvetted entries can be written and edited by anyone.

It is a story I hear from newsrooms across the land, as the old orthodoxies of reporting flex to the new rules of an online world. Even 'The Daily Telegraph' has been known to consult Wikipedia on such traditional issues as royal protocol. Does it matter? Certainly the online encyclopedia has been an astonishing success, growing from 31 entries in English in 2001 to 1.5 million today.

Latest figures show that it is used by around 6 per cent of internet users more than traditionally "trustworthy" sources such as the BBC News website (less than 2 per cent) or 'The New York Times' (less than 1 per cent). Its founder, Jimmy Wales, describes it as the "Red Cross of information", putting knowledge in the hands of everyone on the planet at absolutely no charge.

His faith in his own creation appeared to be borne out by a study published in the scientific journal 'Nature', where experts were asked to review articles covering scientific topics on the websites of both Wikipedia and 'Encyclopaedia Britannica' without being told which source they were looking at. The results seemed impressive. After looking at 42 articles, according to 'Nature', only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected, four from each encyclopaedia.

But there are plenty of views to the contrary, including that of the site's co-founder, Larry Sanger, who claims that it can never be reliable, because amateur contributions and edits are not vetted by experts. Last year, a US researcher developed an online tool that trawled a list of 34 million edits of Wikipedia and matched them to the net address of the editor. The findings showed that the CIA had edited entries, including that of the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It also claimed that a Vatican computer had been used to edit the entry on the Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams.

In a scathing essay, the US cultural commentator Andrew Orlowski dismisses Wikipedia as an "online role-playing game" where players can assume fictional online identities, and "many editors do just that". A more serious charge is that it sanctions intellectual laziness among journalists as well as the rest of us as we idly delegate to Wikipedia the job of finding out the truth. On the other hand, it could transform the world, as former 'Independent' journalist Charles Leadbeater argues in a forthcoming book, calling it "a vast bird's nest of knowledge, each piece of information carefully resting on another".

Who is right? I tested the entry for The Independent and The Independent on Sunday a subject I ought to know something about. After the first 10 errors, I stopped counting. You have been warned!

Message Board: Dangerous dogs: does the law need teeth?

An alarming rise in injuries caused by dogs has prompted calls for pet-owners to be more responsible. Bloggers sided with both victims and dog lovers:

Jackie

I've been in the dog business for years. It's rare to have a dog suddenly turn aggressive to the point that it causes serious injury or death. But you should never have children and dogs of any breed together unless supervised by an adult.

yoric

The police should enforce the Dangerous Dogs Act, which they do not do at the moment, takingall pit bulls off the street and prosecuting the owners. And all dogs should be muzzled in public.

rotty lover

I don't think it always helps muzzling what would or should be a placid dog. Muzzling alienates good dogs.

xylene

When I grew up in the Sixties I rarely encountered large dogs. I feel sorry for children now who have to face daily confrontations with today's breeds of large Teutonic dogs.

Steve Leicht

A person is more likely to kill than a dog. Where a dog is aggressive blame lies with the people and the individual dog, not the breed. I suffer from bipolar disorder and would not be alive without the companionship of my Rottweiler.

emm

Breed identification is tough and the descriptions used to identify "dangerous breeds" are often vague. Two breeds with similar descriptions are classified by the American Kennel Club as "dangerous" and "the perfect pet".

lewis

Why do the police and the Kennel Club keep justifying these attacks as being "rare"? Dog bites happen all the time, but the media only focuses on bites from certain breeds.

emm

Fatalities by dogs are very rare compared with other causes of death: in an average year in the US 440,000 are killed by smoking, 40,000 in car accidents, 76 in floods and 16 by dogs.

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